My English teacher during my sophomore year of high school was a portly man with light hair, light eyes, and shiny skin. Khaki pants and polo shirts were his attire of choice. He shouted. That was the normal volume of his voice. The decibel level was often incongruent with the content of his speech, though he knew that the disparity would hold our attention.

His shouting was also particularly effective when he read Shakespeare, for when he recited the bard’s work, he sounded like Kenneth Branagh.

The curriculum for sophomore English included grammar and punctuation.

“So what do you say when someone knocks on the door?” he shouted at us one morning. “Do you say, ‘It’s me’?”

His light eyes twinkled. Teaching grammar brought him joy. (Yeah, we found that weird, too.)

“‘It’, the subject, refers to ‘me’, and thus”—he dramatically cleared his throat—”the correct reply is, ‘It is I!’”

He said “It is I!” with the gusto and flair of Cyrano de Bergerac’s prose. We giggled at his silliness.

“It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? My wife rolls her eyes at me when I come home every evening: ‘It is I!’ I crow.”

One morning, he shouted oratory at us from a college admissions essay. Some kid had written a college essay that went something like this:

I have waded through an ocean of tulips in the Pacific Northwest, scaled the walls of the Grand Canyon, and watched the traders create money on Wall Street (and on and on and on—some of the descriptions bordered on impossible)… but I have yet to go to college.

His smile shone almost as brightly as his oily face. “Now that,” he shouted exuberantly, “is an excellent college essay. It captures your attention, maintains your interest, and communicates effectively.”

The most memorable lesson he imparted upon me, though, is the use of punctuation when addressing a letter.

“You may use either a colon or a comma when addressing a letter,” he shouted. His eyes sparkled with mirth.

“A colon is formal. Use it when writing official or serious correspondence.

“A comma, on the other hand, is casual! If you are willing to hug the recipient of the letter, then use a comma. If there is no way in Hades you would touch the person for whatever reason, or, at best, you would only shake his or her hand, use a colon.”

His explanation struck me. Could a punctuation mark really embody that magnitude of intimacy?

Probably not. I, however, delighted in the discreet sentiment, the metadata aspect of it. A shift from a colon to a comma (or vice versa!) following the greeting could communicate something significant.

Nearly 15 years have passed and, to this day, I still consider that touch/no touch algorithm with each letter I write. It’s worked well, even if I’m the only one who recognizes the intention behind my choice of punctuation.